水果派AV

Cayuga Community College is shepherding the creation of a centralized workforce development center, which would house several agencies that play a role in helping county residents develop skills desired by local employers and ultimately secure employment. The center is set to be located at the longtime Auburn home of the Cayuga County Cornell Cooperative Extension office, and it would require renovations.

CCC has secured $2.4 million from the state for the initiative, but the funding requires a local match. The state commitment reflects the amount project leaders thought the extension building could be worth before the property's value was assessed. One of the main sources for that matching amount includes the gift of the property on Grant Avenue, which has been since been appraised at $1.6 million. Now project leaders are looking at "other funding possibilities to offset the difference," CCC President Brian Durant said.

In November, the Cayuga County Legislature formally acquired and placed the extension building in a trust for CCC. Durant said the center is one of the college's top priorities and that he anticipates "over the next several months to solidify the design, timeline and the goals" of the project.聽

The agencies set to work within that center include CCC's Continuing Education and Workforce Development division, Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Cayuga Works Career Center, along with the organizations that lease space space from the career center, Durant said. He said the project aligns with the work all of the groups are already doing.

"This vision of leveraging this gift to create a workforce development center and centralizing these agencies with the college on all things from unemployment to workforce development to supporting both programming and non-credited enrichment, it really ties well together with what each of us do separately and ultimately, what our visions can be," Durant said.

Dan Welch, associate director of Cornell Cooperative Extension Association of Cayuga County, said his agency, the county and CCC are also going through the process of executing the project's legal documents. Welch said project partners have been talking about the design and layout of the building, too.

Cayuga County Soil and Water Conservation District and other agencies had leased space in the extension building many years ago ago, Welch said. But staffing has changed over the year,聽 he said, noting "almost all agencies have had to do more with less." As a result, the building has had more space than Cornell has needed.

"It will enable us to have a little more modern work space that reflects the size of the organization now," Welch said.

He said the organizations set to be housed together in the workforce center have worked together well in the past, and being in the same area will allow them to share ideas even more effectively. The extension is excited about the project, Welch said, adding that he believes it will "have a lot of benefits for Cayuga County as it's completed and the other agencies are co-located in here."

Maureen Riester, who runs Cayuga Works and serves as director of Cayuga County Employment and Training Department, said she is also looking forward to the project. The career center is currently located in space leased from CCC at the college's Auburn campus. Other agencies, such as the New York State Department of Labor and ACCES-VR, which helps people with disabilities with employment needs, lease from the career center.

Riester said in January that the workforce development center project was one of the reasons why she took the job at the career center after working for several years at the Cayuga Economic Development Agency. She said at the time she had been in the position for a little less than four months. She said she wants to increase Cayuga Works' visibility and make more people people aware of the organization's services, which include helping obtain the skills to get employed and preparing people for re-employment. Riester noted the extension building is in a high-visibility location on commercially busy Grant Avenue.

"Just the sheer action of moving to a new location and the publicity and high visibility, because I had worked with employers for so long and I know that just being there in the community, not a lot of people knew about Cayuga Works and I wanted to change that," she said. "Having this move will put it in front of people almost every day."

For the layout of the development center, Riester said she is pushing for the building to have sections based on specific needs, such as an area for youth services and an area for services for people with disabilities, "so that the referrals happen seamlessly between all the agencies and there's really good collaboration." She added that she believes that approach would be more beneficial than putting Cayuga Works, CCC, Cornell, etc. into different areas.

Riester said that all of the agencies that will be in the new center work well together from what what she has seen. She added that having all of the organizations in the same area will allow people to learn more about the services each offers.

"I think moving over with Cornell Cooperative Extension, just being in closer proximity might strengthen all the other organizations," Riester said.